Warfare v Welfare

Defence spending

How can the U.K. afford to double its spending on "defence (1)" - fighter jets, military, and nuclear weapons - as America retreats from its role in world affairs (2)?

And who could have forseen a Labour Government facing policy-driven opposition from its own MPs over plans to cut the "balooning" welfare spending bill (3)?

In signing the Hague Declaration earlier in the same week, the Prime Minister said that the UK would buy American-made fighter jets.  This announcement signals the RAF's return to nuclear deterrence for the first time this century.  In so doing, it also raises pressing questions for Government at a time of further pressures on the public purse.

Was any such committment about the projected degree of upscaling armaments articulated by the landslide-winning Labour Party in July 2024's General Election to the Westminster Parliament ?  Ambiguous references to Government's first committment of any Party being the security of its own citizens recur like clichés from the authorities.  What they don't explain is what other committed priorities must now compete with the ramping up of military expenditure.  And what exactly is the justification of diverting so much to warfare?

Financial constraints (i) Britain

Bear in mind, before responding, that the U.K. has a record high level of national debt.  Moreover, the new Government has regularly emphasised the importance of adhering to sound economic management principles, particularly following - what it argues - has been 15 years of mismanagement by previous administrations.  

The actual figures reveal that U.K national debt is currently estimated at £2.6 trillion, the equivalent of 96.4% of its GDP (4) in May 2025, or £39,300 for every person in the country.  In the early 2000's the figure was 30% of GDP. 

Bear in mind also the pressure to rein in public spending.  The wrath and influence of the Government's own MPs welfare reform plans (5) has been persuasively evident in the recent debate.  Likewise despite more funding being allocated to the NHS in the new Government's first budget, the health service continues to attract regular criticism.  Most recently, for example, arising from  independent reviews of some local health trusts, the U.K's Health Secretary has himself ordered a public inquiry into maternity and neonatal services (6) to examine safety concerns, leadership issues, and "the failure to listen to women."  

This and other policy committments normally result in significant cost implications. For example  

• factor in the U.K's international committments required to reach net zero by 2035; 
• the continuing pressures to upgrade the nation's infrastructure - improving the housing stock, upgrading and repairing hospital and schools buildings, and the development of transportation including trains, buses, cycle paths etc; 
• committments to huge pay-outs arising from Public Inquiries including the Post Office, Grenfel Tower, the Infected Blood Inquiry and others; and 
• a whole panoply of priorities including overseas aid whose budget was slashed six months ago from the UN standard of 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% when the then new PM agreed to raise military spending from 2.5% to 3.5% of GDP.

Affordability of spending on essential matters like health and welfare, on nature and the environment, on the state of our public realm and transportation services, on compensating people wronged by inadequate public policies, on caring about global deprivation and starvation, never mind the many other domestic priorities such as supporting creative arts and related activities - none of these can be forgotten when political leaders meet to decide on policy, budgets and priorities.  Especially so when they make gigantic and seemingly unplanned calls to extra arms. 

Financial constraints (ii) America

The United States is a case in point, albeit somewhat larger in scale.  Its experience is arguably the biggest example of what goes wrong when national debt is ignored, overlooked or dismissed.  

A recent newspaper article (7) by Trinity College's Professor of economics argues a case that President Trump is "squandering America's reputation as a serious country."  In support of that argument, he refers to its mix of tax cuts, incremental attacks on the rule of law and trade wars that undermine financial stability.  Rational people, he says, are "avoiding the dollar."  In this analysis, America's problem (akin to the U.K.'s) is its debt-to-GDP ratio, now at its highest level post-world war 2, and climbing.

That ratio stands at 97-99% of GDP, compared to 35% in the 1980s.  His article adds that in the last year America's government has spent $1.8 trillion more than it took in, marking a deficit above $1 trillion for the fifth year in a row.  With interest rates consequently surging, last year the US Treasury paid $882 billion in interest on federal debt, or 3.1% of GDP.  The USA, he says, now spends more on servicing its debt than it does on defence or on Medicare. 

The TCD economics professor concludes with an observation that the new American administration's vaunted "One Big Beautiful Act" with its tax cuts for the wealthy will add  a further $2.4 trillion to America's $36.7 trillion debt pile.

Another journalist argues an ethical case (8) against American foreign policy over the last 40 years.  It also refers to the US President's being fawned over by and feted by other nations.  She presents a series of arguments to justify the case that "Under Trump, the West has lost its moral compass."

Conclusions

One is left to ponder what might previous Governments - both in the U.K and in the USA - that have been favourably disposed to capitalism and living within national means would make of their successors' actions.

On the arms front, for example, one ponders what lessons are today's leaders learning from those of recent and past centuries.  Why does the urge to kill persist in the 21st century among certain prominent leaders as a means to resolving problems?  

• Do contemporary leaders ever listen to the veterans of past military campaigns; 
• why the mad race to arms half way through the 2020's, to talk ourselves into warmongering as the priority when there is no military "defence";  and 
• why waste money on life-threatening attack and on spirals of revenge when there are many more positive life-enhancing alternatives to consider?  

These include education, culture, peace, diplomacy, good and neighbourly relations.  Instead of reaching for weapons of obliteration and war-mongering, why not instead work at enlarging the powers of peace-making bodies.  Consider the achievements - usually under the radar - of global charities and local community development organisations. 

Instead of spending our way to mutual destruction, would it not  be better to invest in cleaning up the planet before it becomes uninhabitable?  And why not divert unaffordable arms spending into feeding hungry people when there is plenty of food for everybody on earth?   

Why are so many leaders replicating the divisive past?  How can bellicosity be regarded as a desirable characteristic of leadership that puts citizens first?  

This is the twenty-first century.  

Ack: Martyn Turner IrishTimes 28 June 2025

© Michael McSorley 2025  

References:-

1. The Guardian 23 June 2025 Aletha Adu "UK will commit to spending 5% of GDP on defence by 2035 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/23/uk-will-commit-to-spending-5-of-gdp-on-defence-by-2035?CMP=share_btn_url

2. BBC News 25 June 2025 "Trump says NATO pledge to raise defence spending a big win for USA and the West"  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm2ld0e0rzkt

3.  The Times 28 June 2025 Steven Swinford at al "Starmer in trouble as landslide turns to avalanche of dissent"

4.  House of Commons Library Economic Indicators 20 June 2025 based on OBR Economic Outlook & ONS Public Sector Finances

5. Independent  A Mitchell et al 26 June 2025 "Starmer in crisis talks over changes to welfare bill as he attempts to stave off MPs' rebellion" 

6. BBC News 23 June 2025 Nick Triggle Michael Buchanan National Inquiry announced after maternity failings  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c994x95yygyo.amp

7. Irish Times 21 June 2025 David McWilliams "Despite being obsessed with money, Donald Trump doesn't really understand it"

8. Irish Times 28 June 2025 Lara Marlowe "US-Israeli efforts to remake the Middle East never work"